Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/121

 ordinary believer to the fanatic, from the penitent to the miracle-worker, from the convert to the fiery apostle. If one could only embrace it all! If one could only extend a hand to each of them! But it is useless; that great work will never be completed, and the chronicler, having renounced the honour of distilling scientifically all his historical material, turns away with sorrow from the individual cases which it is not permitted him to relate.

I wish I could stay a little longer with Saint Ellen! I wish I need not treacherously abandon our friend, R. Marek, undergoing a rest cure at Spindelmühl! I wish I could reveal the workings of the brain of that industrial strategist, G. H. Bondy. All in vain; the Absolute has already flooded the world, and has become a mass-phenomenon; and the chronicler, regretfully looking backward, must reconcile himself to a summary description of a few of the social and political events which inevitably ensued.

Come, then, let us enter upon a new range of facts.